Foundation Osho International - The Chakra Book: Energy and Healing Power of the Subtle Body

Osho,
Is knowledge about esoteric subjects such as chakras, collective unconsciousness, energy fields, really helpful along the way, or not? Or will whatever is needed come to me through experience, in its own time?

Anything that is needed will come of its own accord, in its own time. All this so-called esoteric knowledge about chakras, energy fields, kundalini, astral bodies, is dangerous as knowledge. As an experience, it is a totally different thing. Dont acquire it as knowledge. If it is needed for your spiritual growth, it will come to you in its right time, and then it will be an experience.

If you have an acquired knowledge, borrowed knowledge, it is going to be a hindrance. For example Hindu Yoga believes in seven chakras, Jaina scriptures mention nine chakras, and Buddhist scriptures say that there are dozens of chakras and that these are only the important ones which have been chosen by different schools. They dont give any fixed number. Acquired knowledge will be confusing: How many chakras? And what are you going to do with that knowledge, whether there are seven or nine or dozens? Your knowledge is not going to help; it can only hinder.

My own experience is that perhaps Buddhas experience is correct and that does not make the Hindu Yoga or Jaina Yoga incorrect. Buddha is saying that there are energy fields, whirling energy fields, from the lowest point in your spine up to the very peak of your head. There are many; now it is only a question of a particular teaching which ones are important for it. That particular teaching will choose those. Hindus have chosen seven, Jainas have chosen nine. They dont contradict each other, it is simply that the emphasis is on whatever chakra the teaching feels to emphasize.

As far as I am concerned, you will come across only four chakras which are the most important.

One you know is your sex center. The second, just above it, which is not recognized in any Indian school of thought but has been recognized in Japan alone, is called the hara. It is between your navel and the sex center. The hara is the death chakra.

My own experience is that life, that is the sex center, and death, that is the hara, should be very close, and they are.

In Japan, when somebody commits suicide, it is called hara-kiri. Nowhere in the world does such a thing happen except in Japan. Suicide is committed everywhere, but with a knife? Just two inches below the navel, the Japanese forces a knife and this is the most miraculous death; no blood, no pain and death is instantaneous.

So the first chakra is the life chakra; it is a whirling energy. Chakra means wheel, moving. Just above the life chakra is the death chakra.

The third important chakra is the heart chakra. You can call it the love chakra, because between life and death the most important thing that can happen to a man or to a woman is love. And love has many manifestations: meditation is one of the manifestations of love, prayer is one of the manifestations of love. This is the third important chakra.

The fourth important chakra is what Hindu Yoga calls the agna chakra just on your forehead between the two eyes. These four chakras are the most important.

The fourth is from where your energy moves beyond humanity into divinity. There is one more chakra, which is at the top part of your head, but you will not come across it in your life journey. Thats why I am not counting it. After the fourth, you have transcended the body, the mind, the heart, all that is not you only your being remains. And when death happens to such a person

Thats why in India the hara has not been taken note of; in the Hindu or Jaina or Buddhist Yoga, they were not considering people who commit suicide. They were thinking about people who were transforming their energy from the physical to the immaterial.

So the fifth chakra is the sahasrar. The Jainas count it, the Hindus count it because a person who dies after transcending the fourth chakra His energy, his being leaves the body, cracking the skull into two parts; that is the sahasrar chakra, but because it is not part of your life experience, I am not counting it. The four are your life experience. This one is the death of a person who is enlightened. He does not die from the hara.

Thats why in India no school has taken note of the hara chakra. But in Japan they had to take note of it, because in Japan suicide was a form of etiquette.

You will be puzzled: the Japanese have such a totally different culture from the whole world; from small things to big things, they have their own approach.

I am reminded of one incident. A Japanese can commit suicide for small things because he cannot live a life of shame. If he feels ashamed, that is enough to finish his life and you will not be able to conceive of what small things are thought so important that life is nothing.

A master, who was the greatest archer of Japan, was called by the king. The king wanted his son to become as great an archer as the master.

Now, it is Japanese etiquette that even when two people are going to fight with each other, first they will bow down to each others divinity with folded hands, even though they are going to kill. Before killing, they will respect each other. So in ordinary life in Japan, you will find people everywhere bowing down to each other on the road, in the restaurants. It is disappearing, as the modern Western influence is changing the whole world.

But the master archer was such an egoist that even in front of the king he waited: first the king should fold his hands, and then

The kings court condemned the man and said, You have committed such a shameful act. Just go back and commit hara-kiri. It was not such a big thing, but when the whole court had said it, the whole country would know about it.

The man went directly to his home and committed hara-kiri.

He had three hundred students. When they heard that their master had committed a shameful act, all three hundred students committed hara-kiri because it was so shameful that their master should have behaved like this.

Now this cannot happen anywhere else in the world. If the master had done something shameful although it was not much of a shameful act, but even if it were, the students were completely innocent. But because they were the students of that master, it was enough to feel ashamed they had followed such a man.